Reducing cost seems to be on most people’s minds these days and software seems like a pretty obvious target. I’ve read that on average software constitutes 18 to 37 percent of the overall IT budget and Gartner in 2006 stated that 89 percent of executives believe license compliance is a corporate problem.I’ve also read that Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) now offer large rewards for reports of license noncompliance or piracy.And there are so many mandates that make software compliance important like Sarbanes-Oxley, copyright regulations, HIPPA…

Gartner also said thatthrough 2008, 30 percent of large enterprises will experience at least one on-site software audit per year (0.7 probabilities). That’s pretty threading! You don’t want to have one of your software vendors audit you only to find that you are under-licensed or over-licensed and out of compliance with your software contract!I know of a company that recently paid MILLONS of dollars to a major software vendor because they were under-licensed

It gets even more complicated when you consider virtualization!Do you have any servers sitting around with software installed but they are unused?Those are licenses you’re paying for that you aren’t even using.Software vendors are now taking advantage of the ambiguity of software contracts relating to expanded license scope caused by technologies like virtualization.

There are a lot of challenges in managing software compliance and it’s difficult to address the challenges with manual processes.The company I mentioned that spent millions of dollars in a software audit can’t afford to have that happen again.They are implementing software asset management to automate software management processes.

What do you do to make sure your software is compliant or do you use a manual process?How do you make sure your software is compliant when using Virtual Machines?I want to hear from you!